What Happened to My Facebook Reach?

Did the reach of your Facebook business page tank in June 2015?? Here’s a possible reason, excerpted from The Guardian.

Facebook has announced the latest change to the algorithm governing what stories its users see in their news feeds on the social network.

The company says it hopes to help more “meaningful” stories bubble up in people’s feeds by looking beyond metrics like comments, likes and shares when judging what’s interesting.

The previous Facebook algorithm relied heavily on Likes, Shares and Comments to determine the reach of posts (that is, how many people who Like your page actually SEE your posts in their newsfeed.) The new algorithm now takes into account the amount of time that you spend on a news item even if you choose not to Like, Comment or Share.

“We’ve discovered that if people spend significantly more time on a particular story in News Feed than the majority of other stories they look at, this is a good sign that content was relevant to them,” they wrote.

Facebook is stressing that pages run by companies and celebrities are not expected to be affected by this change – despite unrest in the past after similar tweaks have meant page posts reach less people on the social network.

They may stress that, but I certainly noticed an impact on some of my client’s Facebook pages. So, if your business’s Facebook Reach has been impacted, this could be why.